


Later That Day in Edom

by Erikthonius



Category: The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Discussions of Morality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23540401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erikthonius/pseuds/Erikthonius
Summary: Asmodeus discusses why he did what he did.
Kudos: 1





	Later That Day in Edom

Asmodeus sat in the now empty room, surveying the destruction that the fight had wrought. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a single pair of hands clapping.

“Oh, well played. Who knew that a Prince of Hell could be such a drama queen?”

The man-shaped being who entered the room didn’t really have a name, or if he did, no-one in this reality knew it. On the rare occasion that these creatures made themselves manifest, they rarely introduced themselves. Asmodeus knew him simply to go by the title, Agent of Fate. He knew that the title wasn’t entirely accurate, but it would do.

“I’d already agreed to do what you asked. I just thought I’d amuse you in the process. If I had a little fun on my own, what’s the harm?”

The Agent smiled. “No harm at all, really. On the contrary, maintaining your reputation as a suave, slightly bored demon actually makes my job easier.”

Asmodeus hid a frown at the thought of the Agent’s job. As one of the highest ranked demons in existence, he disliked not knowing things, and little was known about what these beings did. They were said to be charged with maintaining the integrity of all the divergent realities, but what did that really mean? Still, two things that the wisest immortals knew better than everyone else were that some things really were inevitable, and that no matter where you were in the scheme of things, there was always something higher on the ladder than you were, and, by the same token, there was something lower. That philosophy was one of the reasons he’d wound up on the side of the Great War that he did. People like that smug Raziel, with his heavenly stick up his heavenly ass all the time, got so furious when Asmodeus had dared to point out that hierarchies were not always as linear as they appeared.

The Agent laughed at him. “Contemplating what I get out of our little deal?” he asked, the perpetual look of knowing a little more than everyone else not as irritating as it might be.

“Always,” Asmodeus replied smoothly. “I don’t doubt your people are also cutting deals with the other side.”

“I never said we weren’t. It probably won’t surprise you to know that some on Heaven’s side share your goal.”

“My goal?” Asmodeus asked, stressing the pronoun. “I thought your group also wanted the Great War to end. At least that’s what you said.”

“Your people’s eons-long conflict is threatening to undermine not just this, but several adjacent realities. Keep your petty quarrels going if you must, but if you can’t keep your apocalypse within bounds, we’re going to have to take steps.” He took a breath. “Asmodeus, I know that you are heartily sick of the waste of it all. I saw what this realm looked like before it had its Armageddon. I know what its destruction meant to you. That’s why I took steps so that this latest debacle would at least leave you with some raw materials for rebuilding, even though I know how painful it must have been for you, what with the whole Lilith business.”

Asmodeus sighed. Ah Lilith. She’d been so beautiful, so captivating. For a time, they’d been lovers. He remembered the bliss. He also remembered that she’d been lovers with Raziel. This was not surprising; they were eternals. They got around. He’d been Raziel’s lover for a time. But then, the schism came. He suspected that Raziel, ever one to hold a grudge, had been the one to curse her, to make her barren. That had been a mistake. She’d been an angel of childbirth, and the curse had driven her insane, making her the worst enemy the other side had to face.

That was another reason that Asmodeus had grown weary of the war. He’d seen realms laid waste, his own and many others. It was the effect of the devastation that spawned the poor misbegotten creatures known as lesser demons. Asmodeus knew that at present they were his subjects, but he couldn’t help feeling a mixture of contempt and pity for the poor things.

The problem was that eternals like himself, angels and greater demons fed on feelings rather than matter, so they were dependent on the dreams, emotions, and memories of mortals. And like mortals, what they ate affected what they were. Feeding exclusively on aspirations and purely spiritual thoughts had engendered some fanatics on the Heavenly side, whereas being restricted to a diet of greed and lust certainly didn’t help his own demonic brethren. He thought again of Lilith, sustaining herself on the curses of those who had couldn’t have children or had lost them prematurely.

Then, when the Celestial War had destroyed the natural populations of his own and his brother demons’ realms, leaving them nothing to feed on but the demented madness of the lesser demons’ broken minds, they’d taken to venturing into the contested realms, such as Earth. The angelic forces had established strong barriers, but demons could send a part of themselves into those realms. Unfortunately, it was only a small part, weak and limited, so they had to resort to tactics such as being summoned by those mortal beings with some skill in magic. The problem with that was that the summoners had agendas of their own, hence the endless bargains, and all the paperwork, and since the part of the demons that could manifest in these realms was invoked by a Word, words (and symbols, hence rune magic) had power. A lot of power.

Fortunately, Asmodeus was a clever and subtle demon. (Well, he had been on the Celestial legal team before the Schism.) Unlike some of his more ham-handed friends (Beelzebub, take a bath before you cross over into the mortal realm; the smell alone gives you the “archfiend” reputation), he relied more on charm than terror, and look what it got him. He’d sired some of the best warlocks, including Merlin. At present, his pride and joy was Magnus Bane. Now that kid had some style.

“Asmodeus, are you in there?” The Agent of Fate waved his hand in front of the demon’s face.

“Sorry,” Asmodeus said. “I was lost in thought for a moment.

“A little sleepy after a big meal?” the other teased. “I mean you just ate all those day walker’s memories, not to mention a lot of other people’s. No matter. I just want to remind you of a few things.”

“Yes, yes, I remember,” Asmodeus said, waving a hand in mock irritation. Your group wants to change the Nephilim.”

“Well, they’ve been getting worse. They get more and more fanatical, so they escalate hostilities. Then your side steps things up. And so on. Then the next thing you know, another realm collapses, and when the next one goes, it’s going to be worse than Edom. What is a sceptron, by the way?”

Asmodeus gestured at the charred metal rod on the floor, and then said, “So, I turned the day walker back into a human being so he can ascend and become a Shadow Hunter, and that fixes everything?”

“Not everything, but it’s a good start. That Shadow Hunter/warlock love story will do a lot in that department as well, especially where the Cold Peace is concerned.”

Asmodeus smirked at that. He always enjoyed his children’s love affairs, and this one looked to be a doozy. “Do I detect some shipping?”

The Agent only smirked, but a pool of demon ichor behind him seemed to have randomly settled into rather macabre heart emoji shapes. Asmodeus chuckled at that, but withheld a shudder. For all of demons’ and angels’ powers, these mysterious Agents could bend probability to their ends, causing bizarre coincidences at their own choosing and fortune to favor their cause at will. Never play dice games with this being, he reminded himself.

“Just out of curiosity,” Asmodeus assumed the most casual of tones, “since you’re meddling in the destiny of the Nephilim, would it be reasonable to assume that you’re also doing something similar to our forces?”

The Agent shook his head. “Oh, I think you know better than to ask questions like that.” He thought about the things his kind had done to Sebastian and changed the subject. He gestured to the bodies of the Endarkened sprawled on the floor around them. “Sorry about the mess, by the way, but I think they’ll come in handy.”

Asmodeus frowned. He’d not likened the Endarkened. He knew what they were, corpses animated with a tiny bit of Lilith’s essence, mere meat puppets. If enough of them had been created, it might have hastened her return to corporeality, but for all of his affection for her, he thought the universe was better off having that delayed. Besides, maybe (for a Greater Demon, he was surprisingly hopeful), the time she spent out of body might have the effect of lessening her madness.

The other thing was, the way the Infernal Cup worked was to kill the Shadow Hunters outright, and Asmodeus found that wasteful. He subsisted on emotions and dreams, and those animated corpses had neither of those, only false echoes of the bodies’ previous desires.

Then he thought. Corpses they were, but corpses teeming with microorganisms. Edom was a dead world; the only corporeal beings on it since the Great War had sterilized it were lesser demons, a poor imitation of life, and the sceptron had wiped even that out. But now…

He gestured, and the floor was cleared of the bodies. Those bodies had been placed into the ground across the dead world, and the bacteria and viruses infesting the corpses could do their work. It would take eons, but what matter? He was Asmodeus, he was immortal. He would see this world full of life, yearning and dreaming. And Asmodeus, Lord of Edom, would feast again.

The Agent rose to leave and said, “Thank you, Lord Asmodeus.”

“Not at all,” the Greater Demon said smoothly. “I’ve been recompensed well for my services.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a fan of Manichaeism. Even though it's fun to have the protagonists battling against "Ultimate Evil," it's a better story if neither side's hands are totally clean. More specifically, a lot of what Asmodeus did in his bargain to return our heroes to Earth really didn't seem to advance Hell's agenda, so I came up with this as a way of making my own sense of why he did what he did.
> 
> Regarding the "Agent of Fate" character, I admit that it's largely a deus ex machine to cause the whole discussion to exist, but he (gender is irrelevant to such beings, but since he's largely the omniscient author type, I'm using my own pronouns, I invite readers to do the same) is also a device I might use in other stories, especially crossovers.


End file.
